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THE NEW EUROPE

more marked than among the Southern Slavs; indeed, the Slovene Catholic clergy have been very much in evidence as advocates of Southern Slav unity and sympathisers with Serbia. It may be added that as not merely the Catholic, but also the Orthodox and Uniate hierarchy, owe their appointments to the State, their attitude to the dynasty and the State is almost equally conservative and subservient.

In a subsequent article we propose to discuss in detail the internal situation of the Dual Monarchy during the present war.R. W. Seton-Watson.

Count Czernin: the New Emperor's New Foreign Minister

[In Austria there has been another and even more surprising shake of the political kaleidoscope. Dr. von Spitzmüller, the financial nominee of Budapest and Berlin, who had replaced Dr. von Koerber, failed to maintain himself and has been succeeded by the Bohemian feudal aristocrat, Count Clam-Martinitz. He, like his colleague without fortfolio, Dr. Baernreither (the well-known German—Bohemian Conservative leader), is known to have enjoyed the confidence of the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and to have favoured a revision of the Dual System, and just concessions to the Southern Slavs and the Hungarian nationalities. At the same time another prominent supporter of the same policy, Count Ottokar Czernin, also a member of the high Bohemian aristocracy, has been appointed Joint Foreign Minister. It is too soon to express a definite opinion as to these changes, but they certainly suggest a rally of the "Old Austrian" party against the excessive influence of Prussia and Hungary.

The following interesting study of Austria-Hungary's new Foreign Minister, who till last August was Minister in Bucarest, is from the pen of the distinguished Roumanian statesman, M. Take Ionescu, and appeared in his newspaper La Roumanie a few days before the evacuation of the capital.]

Count Czernin is a thoroughly typical Austrian. We all know, and are always repeating, that there is no Austrian nation. This is true in the real sense of the word. An Austrian people, that is to say, an agglomeration of individuals possessing a collective conscience, does not, and, could not, exist. But "Austrians" there are. They are the members of a clique which is recruited from among all the nations of the earth, who, from generation to generation, have served the Habsburgs, who live by the Imperial favour, and who form a kind of civil General Staff to that family, which itself is the only link which holds together all the different races of the Monarchy. These people speak German among them-

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